Earl of Rochester. 15

It may be here expected, that I should give a Cha-racter ofhis Lordship's Writings, his Genius, his Temper,and the like : But the former are so well defended already,that there is nothing left for me to add ; and it is so diffi.Cult a Matter to paint the latter, that I am afraid to at-tempt it. However, since it is a Part of the Task I haveundertaken, 1 shall venture to add a few Words on both.

He had a Strength oi Expression, and a Happiness ofThought peculiar to himself, and seems to me, of all theModerns, to have come nearest the Antients in Satiresnot excepting our Boile au ; for tho’he be very correct,and has spared no Pains to dress the Satires of Ho ra ce ingood French, yet it smells too much of the Lamp: Where-as, when any Thought of Horace, Juvenal, Per-sius, or Boileau, occurs in my Lord’s Verses, it i splainly his own, without any Marks of borrowing it frordiany other, the Spirit and Easiness of the Whole being of aPiece. His looser Songs, and Pieces, too obscene for thel adies Eyes, having their peculiar Beauties, and aie in-deed too dangerous to peruse; for what would have ren-dered them nauseouy if they had been written by a Ge-nius less powerful, in him alarms the Fancy, and rouzesthe Blood and Appetite more than all the Medicamentsof Cleopatra. There are two Books in Latin thatseem to be written with my Lord’s Spirit, Petronius Ar-biter, and Mtursius's Dialogue:, where the Beauty of theExpression, and the Strength of the Spirit and Fancy,have given a Sort of Merit to Lewdness, which no otherWriters could ever obtain.

A s for his Lordship’s Temper, it was various, as it wasmore or less inspired with Wine. He was an excellentMimic; and in all hisfrolickfome Disguises, he so trulypersonated the Thing he would seem, that his most in-timate Acquaintance could not discover the Impostor.

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